As Quinn grabbed his sunglasses and headed out the door, he couldn't help but notice Nate's eyes following his every move. Quinn knew his brother was curious, but he had sworn an oath to keep his employment at the CIA a secret. He couldn't break that oath.
He climbed into his car and solemnly drove to his headquarters. Security allowed him to pass, as usual, and soon he found himself in Margot's office.
She gave him a wan smile and stood from her desk. “Before you go in there, I would advise you to take a deep breath and don't overreact. Promise me.”
Quinn nodded, thoroughly confused. Why would he overreact to a meeting with his boss?
Margot pressed the talk button on the intercom. “He's coming in.”
Quinn held his emotions in check and pushed into Mr. Lorrander's office. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Johnson sat at a chair in front of the desk, his left arm in a sling and crutches propped against the arm of his seat. He turned slowly to face Quinn. Dread was written all over his face.
Quinn forced himself to remain calm. “What happened?”
Mr. Lorrander motioned to the second chair in the room. The one Rosie had occupied only a few weeks earlier.
Quinn reluctantly sat. Whatever the explanation was, he didn't want to hear it. An explanation would only solidify the fact that something had gone terribly wrong. He didn't want to have to admit that. He didn't want to admit that Rosie could be missing....or worse.
“Before we advise you on the situation,” began Mr. Lorrander, “I would like you to take a few deep breaths and steel yourself.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow. Why did everyone want him to take a deep breath? “You know I can take whatever it is you have to say.”
Johnson kept his head down, not even bothering to look at Quinn. “Rosie Callahan is gone.”
“Gone where?” Quinn still hoped for the best, even when he knew it was probably the worst.
Johnson shifted in his seat. “We don't know. Some men came and spirited her away.”
Quinn gave Johnson a measured glance. He nodded at the other agent's arm. “And that's all you have to show for it?”
“We have video of the men, but they seem to have been able to hide their faces from our cameras.” Mr. Lorrander changed the subject.
“I just want to know how he only came away with one minimal wound.” Quinn could feel the rage surging through his very being.
Johnson looked at Quinn then. “Minimal? I almost died of blood loss!”
Quinn threw his hands in the air. “You're a CIA agent, it comes with the territory. Don't be such a baby about it!”
Lorrander cleared his throat loudly. “Agent Lockes is dead.”
Quinn immediately regretted what he had insinuated. It wasn't fair to blame Johnson for something that might have been unavoidable. Forgiveness and mercy, Quinn knew, were great attributes. He should practice them.
“How?” Quinn asked, finally showing some compassion.
Lorrander slid a file toward Quinn. “He had his throat slit. One clean slice, severing his trachea.”
Quinn snatched the file and opened it. “So they're professionals.”
“It would look that way.” Mr. Lorrander agreed.
Johnson sat back in his chair and drummed the fingers of his right hand on the arm.
Quinn took his time going through the file. If Johnson was nervous, then it was more than likely due to a guilty conscience. CIA operatives weren't supposed to lose the people they were protecting. Not ever. Johnson was probably worried about his job. Quinn made a mental note to put in a good word for the agent.
“Do we have any idea where they could have taken her?” Quinn asked as he closed the file.
Johnson shook his head. “They could be anywhere, but I would bet money they're still on the island. It wouldn't be easy to get Rosie off the island unnoticed. Especially since she wasn't exactly cooperating with them.”
“Did you get anything from them? A DNA sample? A speech impediment?” Quinn knew he was desperate and pulling at strings, but Rosie was worth it.
Johnson furrowed his brow. “You know, come to think of it, they didn't say anything.”
Mr. Lorrander shook his head. “Not uncommon for a kidnapping.”
“Agreed,” Quinn rested his head on his hand. “I wish I knew how they found her.”
“I think I know,” Johnson revealed.
Lorrander and Quinn both turned to look at him.
Johnson reached into a pocket and slid a phone and a battery out of his pocket. He set them on the desk. “I disabled it, but her phone was bugged. I found it when we cleaned out the safe house.”
Quinn studied the small electronic bug that had been placed on the battery of Rosie's phone. It looked simple enough, and was probably a standard brand, meaning there wouldn't be any way to trace it. Another dead end.
“So, we have nothing,” Quinn clarified.
Lorrander nodded. “Unless we get a miracle, she's in the wind.”
Quinn slid his eyes closed and prayed for a miracle.
Rosie blinked as the room came into focus. She didn't remember blacking out. She squeezed her eyes shut again. Why didn't she remember blacking out? What had happened? She always remembered. She never forgot.
There had been rocking, she remembered that. She had grown fond of the chains that held her steady in the center of the shipping container. The bindings that kept her from sliding around on the metal floor.
After that, she didn't remember anything. One moment she had been trying to steady herself in the container, the next she was waking up here. What had happened in that time? Why couldn't she recall?
Rosie tried to move her hands in order to rub her eyes, but instead found them held fast behind her back. She yanked at them, and felt it then. Rope burned into her wrists, and what seemed to be wooden rods held tight against her arms.
Rosie panicked. She rocked forward, trying to propel her chair in that direction. It didn't budge. Her legs appeared to be tied to the legs of the chair. Rosie yanked against all the ropes with every bit of strength she could muster. Nothing moved.
“Like I said before, Roisin, calm yourself down.”
Rosie stopped and lifted her head in the direction of the voice. The man that had held her as they fled the Hawaiian safe house now sat on a chair on the other side of the room. One hand, slung over the back of his chair, held an ominous-looking gun.
The room.
Rosie looked around frantically. Where was she? Her brain tried to process everything at once.
Wood floors. Cabinets. High windows. Nets. Freezers. A splashing sound.
Her head was spinning with new information, and she seemed unable to comprehend any of it. Rosie felt herself beginning to breath faster, on the verge of hyperventilating. She leaned forward on the chair, pulling at her restraints, trying to calm herself down.
She heard the man in the chair move and glanced up to see him staring at her intently.
He turned his head slightly away from her and yelled loudly, “Sean! Sean, get yourself in here!”
The sound of a door opening shattered the stillness of the room. “Oh, for the love of all that's holy, Harry, what did you do to her?”
Rosie heard footsteps across the wooden floor. The second man from Hawaii knelt in front of her.
“I didn't do nothing!” Harry protested.
“You fool idiot!” Sean yelled at him. “Don't be so thick, you obviously did something. Look at her.”
“I swear, I didn't do anything!” Harry stuck to his story.
“Aye, right.” Sean obviously didn't believe him. Sean put his hands gently on Rosie's cheeks and brought her head up to look at him.
Rosie stared back, still hyperventilating. There was something about his face, his eyes. There was a glimmer of...compassion?
“Take a breath now, Roisin. Calm yourself.”
Rosie forced herself to focus on something. Anything. Somehow, her brain latched on to their a
ccents. She thought it through. She replayed their slang and their speech patterns.
“Irish,” she finally deduced.
Sean gave a small smile and continued to cradle her head in his hands. “That we are. You've an ear for accents, have you?”
Rosie could tell her breathing still hadn't slowed down. She was still panicking. “From Ireland?” she asked. It seemed to be all she could focus on.
Sean nodded. “Just a hop across the pond.”
Rosie felt the tears as they came to her eyes and couldn't stop them from rolling out onto her cheeks. “I'm going to die, aren't I?”
Sean wiped away the tears as they fell. “Hey, hey, now. We're not wanting to hurt you. Everything will be grand. We just need you to do as we say, hmm? Come, now.”
The tears seemed to do the trick. With the release of stress, Rosie began to calm down and her breathing became normal again. She pulled back, out of Sean's reach. She didn't want his disgusting hands anywhere near her.
Sean smiled at her, wider this time. He rested his arms on his bent knees as he remained squatted in front of her. “There's a girl. You better now?”
Rosie nodded, blinking away the end of her tears. She didn't believe a word this Sean character was telling her. There was no way their motives were pure. They were going to kill her, it was just a matter of when. These kinds of people were never as good as their word.
“What did Harry do to you?” Sean asked, still not believing Harry's adamant denial.
Rosie shook her head. “Nothing. I...I just panicked, that's all.”
Sean stood to his feet and glanced briefly at Harry. The men seemed to exchange a look that said more than Rosie could tell. Harry skirted through the door and into the next room.
Sean snatched the chair that Harry had vacated and spun it around. He straddled it and stared at Rosie curiously. “You're nothing like what we thought you'd be, Roisin.”
Rosie slid her eyes closed for a moment, focusing on the task at hand. Get as much information out of them as she could. That was what she had to do. “You keep calling me that. R-row...sheen. What does that mean?”
Sean folded his arms atop the back of the chair and gave that smile of his one more time. “It's your name, sweetheart. What we been referring to you as since you was just a wee one.”
“A what?” Rosie was shocked. Unless she was mistaken, that news was startling and unforeseen. She was sure that she had never seen these men before in her life. Ever.
“I think you know perfectly what I meant.”
“But, why would you be watching me? And as a child, no less.” Rosie's brain was spinning. The only thing Irish about her was her parents' heritage. She was an American. A full-blooded, patriotic American. They shouldn't know anything about her. But they did.
“Your mum, of course,” Sean explained. He stood and swung his chair back toward the wall, just as Harry reappeared with three other men.
“M-my mom?” Rosie felt like her entire reality was falling apart. What did her mom have to do with these men? Who were they?
One of the men that had come in with Harry leaned against a wall and folded his arms. “She don't even know what you're saying, Sean.”
“Shut up, Jack,” Sean instructed testily. “Course she don't know what we're talking 'bout. I never expected her to.”
“Get away with you,” said another man.
The last man folded his arms soberly. “You led us to believe she'd be willing to do this, Sean.”
Sean threw his hands in the air. “I never said no such thing! Did either of you take this job based on that assumption? Hmm? Ryan? Gareth?”
Neither man bothered to argue with Sean. He seemed to be the ringleader of this band of Irish...whoever they were.
“What does my mom have to do with any of this?” Rosie finally begged to know, near tears as she said it.
Sean turned his full attention back to the only female in the room. “She was one of us, for a long time. The oldest of us. The best of us.”
“Us?” Rosie was still confused. She hadn't learned anything by asking questions, and for some reason she wasn't retaining much helpful information from their body language or speech patterns. “Who is us?”
“That don't matter, do it?” Jack threw out facetiously.
“Jack!” Sean yelled. “I told you to shut your pie hole. Do it or else.”
Jack pushed himself off the wall and dropped his arms. Rosie could see his hands ball into fists at his side. His face turned into a mask of pure rage.
“Or else what, halfwit? What'll you do to me that I can't do to you?”
Sean rolled his eyes. “Jack, you been threatening for years to take me on. It don't phase me now. I be the tactical leader on this mission, and you know it. Cut it out afore I get a mind to toss you out on the street.”
Jack didn't seem to calm down, but he took a step back.
Rosie found herself breathing a sigh of relief. It was bad enough that she was caught here with these strangers, but if a fight broke out she didn't know what she would do.
“Like Jack said, it don't much matter who we are. What matters now is that we need your help, Roisin.” Sean came to a standstill in front of her, staring her down. “And like I said, we don't want to be hurting you.”
Rosie could read through his words as clearly as she could see through glass. She was going to help them, or he was going to hurt her. Maybe he would do something worse than hurting her.
Rosie debated what she should do. She finally decided Quinn would need time to find her and clues to hunt her down by. She needed to buy him that time.
Rosie slowly made eye contact with Sean. “What do you want me to do?”
Sean smiled, and several of the other men followed suit. “That's a girl.”
THIRTEEN
Quinn paced Margot's office, wondering what his next steps should be. So far, no one at the agency had had any luck tracking down Rosie, nor had they discovered who wanted her dead, if anyone actually did.
Quinn was starting to think that maybe no one wanted Rosie dead. That maybe it was all an enormous ruse. For a company that made their livelihood on the information they gathered, the CIA hadn't been much help in finding anything.
Quinn sank into a chair and closed his eyes. He hated feeling like this. Weak and vulnerable and confused. He was supposed to be the strong one, the person who knew exactly what to do and how to help. A lot of help he had been to Rosie. He hadn't been able to stop anything, and it looked like he was failing again.
There was only one course of action left for him to take.
Quinn leaned forward, eyes still closed, and laid his head in his hands. “God,” he prayed quietly, “she's in Your hands now.”
“Are you alright over there?” Margot spoke up as she typed away into her computer. Her eyes never left the screen.
Quinn looked up and tried to give her his famous smile. He failed miserably, and suddenly all those years he had been a con artist seemed like a waste. “I'll be better once we figure out what's going on.”
Margot held his aviator sunglasses out toward him. “Go home. Get some sleep. You've been here at least 36 hours straight. You need the rest.”
Quinn forced his weary muscles to move one last time and snatched the sunglasses from Margot's grip as he walked by. He didn't bother to put them on.
After the usual, mundane drive through the city, Quinn was more than happy to see his familiar front door. He parked his car outside the garage and pulled his keys from his pocket. Maybe bed was a good idea.
Maybe, for once in her life, Margot was right. It was almost surprising. That woman's insight seemed to get better by the day. Sleep, that was exactly what he needed to clear his head.
Quinn closed the door behind himself and flipped on the lights. He jumped back and clasped a hand to his heart.
Nate smiled and stretched back in his spot on the couch. “Welcome home, little brother.”
“You're breaking in to people's
houses now?” Quinn tossed his keys on a nearby table and reached back to flip his locks closed. Better safe than sorry. Obviously he needed a better security system.
Nate shrugged at him and propped one foot up on the coffee table. “Yeah. And it was harder than I expected it to be. You lock up tight.”
“I was a con man, Nate. People hated me. Do you think I would forget every security precaution I learned during that time?” Quinn dragged his leaden feet to the couch and flopped into the corner.
“Nope. Wasn't even suggesting that. What I was suggesting was that maybe there's a reason you need all these...what did you call them? Oh yeah, security precautions.” Nate made quotation marks in the air as he stressed the last two words.
Quinn had to admit, those words stung. He had always known Nate would see through any lies he had to tell him, and it seemed Quinn's judgment day was upon him. He was going to have to tell Nate something, and he wasn't in the storytelling mood.
“Nate, I really don't want to get into this right now,” Quinn confessed.
Nate sat up a little straighter. “Why?”
“Because I'll hold back information, which will make you frustrated, which will make me defensive, which will end in the two of us having an all-out brawl in my front room, which will end in my favorite 900-dollar coffee table getting smashed to bits. No one wants that.”
Nate chuckled. “Alright. No broken coffee tables tonight. How about you tell me why you're so upset.”
Quinn weighed his options. Nate had backed off, which was nice of him. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to tell him just a snippet of the whole truth. His older brother was an FBI agent, after all. It couldn't be against too many regulations to tell him the bare bones of what was going on.
“You know Rosie, right?” Quinn asked, after an excruciating moment of decision-making.
Nate nodded and rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? Jewel has been in hysterics about the woman for practically the past month. All I can say is, she had better not stand up our wedding. Why do you ask?”
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